


Simple Lives Spent Partially Breathing

by FascinationStreet



Series: Hemisphere Of One, My Soul, Paratrooper [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - World War II, Androids in WWII, Gen, Hank is such a bitch you guys, M/M, Prejudice, Series Prequel, War, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 13:10:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15663873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FascinationStreet/pseuds/FascinationStreet
Summary: “Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re Connor, the android sent by CyberLife.”“I’m grateful for your assistance, Sergeant Anderson,” it smiles, looking as real as any other human. Hank notes the scar at his temple, just visible under his uniform cap, where they’d taken out his LED and the synthetic skin hadn’t quite healed over. It’s enough to make him scowl.“Just don’t want to get caught in battle without someone to fix me up, don’t take it to heart.”





	Simple Lives Spent Partially Breathing

**Author's Note:**

> So when i said i'd be writing another part for this i didn't think i'd have it done within like, a day or two but there you go.
> 
> As with the previous part, it's all pretty heavily lifted from Band of Brothers, but intended to be read generally. If you're not familiar with the timeline, this takes place 3/4 months before the first part, during Operation Market Garden (so during ep 4 of BoB)
> 
> Hank is an asshole at first but he's just meeting Connor so he'll warm up, as well all know :)
> 
> Also i just want to thank everyone who commented on the last part, i know historical AU's aren't everyone's bag so it was super nice to know that there are people enjoying this! I love you all. Especially my beautiful wife who i would be lost without ilu <3
> 
> Warning i guess for androids being called 'it' for most of the fic, but it doesn't last!

The jump gloves in his mouth taste like grease, dirt, and gunpowder. Hank grips them between his teeth as he finishes securing the belly band of his parachute around his midsection and ensures all of the straps are properly attached to the central buckle.

The second Hank finishes checking over his equipment and looks up at his men scattered around the airfield, it becomes clear to him that the replacements, while managing well enough on their own, don’t have nearly as much practical experience with jumping as the men who came through Camp Toccoa. 

No doubt they’ve passed their jump training; they have the jumpwings over their breast to prove it. But there’s a world of difference between jumping over the lush fields of Georgia of jumping into the middle of Occupied Europe, and ain’t nothing can prepare you for it until you do it for yourself.

Their medic, the android RK-whatever, seems the best off. Its movements are efficient if not as well practiced as Hank would like to see. It’s very obviously following the training instructions to the letter, but that’s the problem. The Army trainers and the command as a whole, while competent enough, have shown that they have no idea of how being a paratrooper actually works in active combat. The disaster with the leg bags in the jump over Normandy showed that clear as crystal. 

There’s no chance of having a textbook approach, or jump, or landing. There’s just too many variables, too many unpredictable elements when they don’t have control of the territory. Even if it all technically goes to plan, landing in the battlefield is totally different to landing in a field and waiting for everyone else to land so they can all go back to base together for chow. Jumping now means being ready to fight, means making the split second difference between killing and being killed. He knows this is a totally new form of combat, hell they’ve been told that enough since they enlisted and joined the paratroopers, but there’s no replacement for practical experience.

Hank walks over to the group of replacements that sticks out like a sore thumb. Safety in numbers or some shit, he supposes. Some of them look bemusedly on at the preparations going on around them, some blindy copy the actions of the veterans without understanding how or why they’re doing what they are. Monkey see monkey fucking do.

He tells them to lose their reserve shoots; they’re bulky and they’re dropping into a nice flat plain from a low height, it’s a waste of space and energy to carry it along with all of their other equipment. He snatches a rifle that one of them had taken out of the padded carrier, shows him how to sling it around his middle so that it’s accessible the second they land, ready to fight, but so that it won’t break his fucking jaw the second he touches down in Holland. He fastens their chute harnesses so that they’re secure but easier to peel out of and run. 

They’re all simple things, not in the regulations or actively against training, but that make that difference between shooting the bullet and being on the receiving end of it. All things that other men learned the hard way in Normandy from mistakes that don’t need to be repeated now that men like him know better. They don’t need to lose any more guys than they can avoid.

\---

The first time Hank sees the android, he’s fishing him out of a fucking brawl by the scruff of his dress uniform like an alley cat. 

Their last night spent drinking in England had been enjoyable, for the majority of the men. There were, of course, the assholes like Reed, the guys who hadn’t quite been the same since France, who rightfully shouldn’t be drinking at all but drank way too much who took exception to being told they were moving out. And to their new medic.

He’d left the pub intending to get a head start on stowing his shit, and to make sure his squad made it back in one piece. There had been some kind of commotion and he resolved to ignore it, assuming it to be a couple making the most of their last night together and far too impatient to wait until they got to somewhere private. Then he heard voices, the sound of them cruel and cutting rather than desperate. 

Rolling his eyes to look to the heavens in askance he’d turned the corner, catching flashes of blue on the ground from between the jumpboots; an android armband. For fuck’s sake. He clamped the stump of his cigar between his teeth and waded in to break it up before he had to start reporting anyone. He pulled the android out from the small mob surrounding it, their faces caught in various shades of drunk and stupid.

When he’d turned to see what kind of service droid they’d taken exception to, expecting one of the droids from the pub, he’s holding up their new fuckin’ company medic, the RK800. Just fucking perfect.

“I see any more of this shit and you’re getting written up, and the Captain won’t take too kindly to that, you hear me?” He’d growled, about to dismiss them to go sleep it off in the barracks.

“Come on Sarge,” One of them whines, and Hank just doesn’t have the patience to match the voice to the name in his head, “you know they don’t even got no feelings to hurt.”

Hank pinched the bridge of his nose, took a deep breath.

“Look, private. If this thing gets busted there ain’t nobody out there to save your dumb asses, or anyone else’s. Like it or not it’s one of us now.” He couldn’t say for sure that he wouldn’t have been one of these jackasses a few years back, not seeing any kind of problem with using an android for a little stress relief. But now he’s here, and he has to duty of care for anyone in this company, plastic or not. His personal opinions on androids are no longer relevant, nor are they what they used to be.

He’d waited until they’d all shuffled off, heads hanging in remorse only for being caught and reprimanded by a superior not because of any kind of sense of shame, until he remembered to set down the android. It smoothed out its dress jacket, straightened its tie, and looked up at him, smiling in gratitude.

It tried to introduce itself, as if Hank hadn’t already known his name from the second he’d been told what exactly their new medic was, and Hank had waved him off. He had no patience left for this night.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re Connor, the android sent by CyberLife.”

“I’m grateful for your assistance, Sergeant Anderson,” it smiles, looking as real as any other human. Hank notes the scar at his temple, just visible under his uniform cap, where they’d taken out his LED and the synthetic skin hadn’t quite healed over. It’s enough to make him scowl.

“Just don’t want to get caught in battle without someone to fix me up, don’t take it to heart.”

He’d turned away without another word, pretended not to see the way its face fell at his dismissal. It’s all simulated emotion anyway, nothing to care about.

\---

They load up, they jump, they land back on terra firma. Between the clear weather, the low drop, and the element of surprise the jump is quick and quiet, though nothing is without its issues. In any case, it makes a hell of a contrast to Overlord.

He spends half of his time in Eindhoven pushing their lines through, dragging men from the welcoming arms of women and keeping everyone moving as much as he can through the packed streets. The replacements are having the time of their lives, posing for photos and sitting for a quick bite to eat, being hailed as the liberating heroes of Holland; Hank doesn’t envy them the shock they’re going to get the second they reach their objective.

They roll up to the objective on a rumbling line of Shermans, and Hank can’t believe his fucking eyes. The men are under strict instruction not to leave the tanks until they’re under fire or to take cover, and here their fucking lieutenant is just walking out in the open on top of the road, in plain sight and in the line of fire, turning his back to the enemy without a care in the world. 

They scream at him, and then his throat gets shot out by a sniper. He scatters his squad, pushing them down off the tanks and into the ditches by the side of the road for cover. He shouts for a medic, and the android materialises beside him. 

He’d forgotten, for a second, that their human medics were no longer with them, both injured in France. Now they only have one; apparently an android medic can do the job of two humans. Hank doesn’t know what it can do so much better, but he doesn’t know if it can be in two places at once.

This is the first time he’s seen it in action. Its eyes quickly scanning the damage and assessing the best course of action. He half expects it to tell him the Lieutenant is beyond saving and would be a drain on resources to attempt it, but it tells Hank to help it drag him out of the open and into the ditch. The armband with the android and medic insignias designate them as non-combatant, but the rest of them aren’t so lucky.

Hank leaves it there to move up with his squad after he makes sure it knows what it’s doing. He’s hardly medically trained beyond what he can do with his first aid kit, which isn’t much, but he still hesitates, needing to know that he’s leaving their lieutenant in good hands. In the end, he’s needed in the assault and he has to learn to trust it with his men; it’s the only medic they have from now on, and he better get used to it.

The next time he sees the android is across the village they’re attacking, watching in rapt disbelief just the same as him as him as a fucking stupid British tanker ignores their warnings and drives right into the path of a camouflaged Tiger and gets blown to shit. 

After that, he has much better things to focus on than a toy soldier, like being cut off from the rest of the squad and catching a piece of flying shrapnel with his fucking shoulder. He has to outrun an unmanned Sherman on his hands and knees as it drifts towards him to avoid being crushed by it. He has to find somewhere to hide as he’s left behind while the rest of the company retreats, defeated. Fuck.

It’s a fucking shitty night, the tension of being in an occupied village with no one coming to save him, going hand to hand with a German troop to keep his cover, covered in his blood by the end. He doesn’t sleep, too wired to close his eyes for more than a second at a time. But hey, he got a free drink out of it, the flask from the owner of the barn he’d holed up in still sitting pretty in his pocket next to his last cigar. He would have attempted to save some of the sweet nectar inside it, but he wasn't entirely sure he’d be around long enough to finish it later.

He makes his way back to their encampment in the chill, watery light of the dawn, linking up with a couple of scouts out looking for wanderers. They fill him in on the retreat; who got hit, who didn’t make it, who pulled through. They tell him about the medic, and the men he saved. 

The fact that their tune has changed from back in England and they now refer to the android as ‘he’ does not escape Hank’s notice. He puts it aside for later, focussing on the idle griping between his companions instead once they’ve exhausted the topic of the defeat.

The next time he sees the android, it’s hanging back while the rest of the company swarm Hank, faceless hands patting his back, his shoulder, his face. It has the same expression on its face as when he’d fished him out of the middle of the mob back in England. 

Hank doesn’t know why it looks so happy; Hank should mean nothing to it, it shouldn’t feel anything for any of them beyond directives to keep them alive as long as possible.

Once he’s finished with the welcomes back he hears the call from the Captain to pack up and move out, and he slots back into his role without a second’s pause. His shoulder throbs as he makes the rounds, checking his squad is ready to load up.

The android stops Hank from climbing into the back of the troop truck with his squad, steering him to sit on the bed of the truck in front of it instead of on the bench. Hank frowns in question, and it taps his injured shoulder in response. Hank relents, and sits where it tells him to.

To say he was sceptical of going into battle with an android at his back, responsible for his life and the life of his entire company, is an understatement, and a polite one at that. But, he’s not too proud to admit when he’s wrong. In his head, at least. 

He’s not quite ready to sign up to be a friend of the androids and wave a little flag or whatever the fuck the robot huggers do back home but he thinks maybe he can stop trying to keep it at arms distance. And maybe stop calling him an ‘it’, maybe use his name every once in a while.

Connor performed well under pressure, and that’s enough for Hank to judge anyone else favourably. There was no hesitation, no faltering, and by all accounts he’d gone out of his way to make sure every wounded man had a fighting chance to make it back from the village, even the ones left for dead by their brothers.

If nothing else, the Captain had tasked Hank and the rest of the squad and platoon leaders to make sure that no anti-android sentiments got in the way of their mission or Connor’s. And that includes his own opinion. So, he resolves, no one is about to fuck with their medic as long as Hank is around, and he’s determined to get the fuck over his own issues. 

He’s jolted from his contemplations when the truck lurches as it pulls away and Connor shoves the gauze into his shoulder too hard. He grunts in annoyance, and Connor pats his good shoulder, mumbling an apology. Once the truck is moving steadily he goes back to tending Hank’s shoulders, fingers working lighter and faster dressing the wound.

When Connor has finished patching him up he heaves himself up off the boards and onto the bench, stretching out his aching legs in front of him as much as he can. He’s sitting on the opposite side to Connor, who currently has his nose stuck in his medic bag packing away supplies.

Hank takes the opportunity of the long drive back to base to observe the change in how the men treat him. They don’t offer him a smoke, there’s no point in wasting good Luckies after all, but there’s a softening of the divide between them and him. Men who might have jumped at the chance to use an android for an impromptu stress relief session in a pub alley seem to have thawed a little, just like they had with the other green recruits who made it through the day.

There’s no replacement for trial by fire, he thinks, and they might just make it yet.


End file.
